BRASELTON, Georgia, Sept.30, 2006 With a remarkable 1-2 victory over the
factory Corvettes at Road Atlanta, the Pirelli-shod Aston Martins took
the 2006 American Le Mans Series GT1 Manufacturers' Championship down to
the wire, now forcing a showdown at the last round at Laguna Seca with
only seven points separating the teams.

The 1000-mile race was a true test of stamina, reliability, and
consistency. The #007 Aston Martin DBR9 of Tomas Enge and Darren Turner
took the top spot, one lap ahead of the #009 sister car of Stephane
Sarrazin and Pedro Lamy. The #4 Corvette of Oliver Gavin, Olivier
Beretta and Jan Magnussen was third, a further lap behind. Enge, who now
moves into second place in the GT1 Drivers' Championship.

"We had a really great preparation here last weekend," commented Enge.
"We did a lot of test laps and it really paid off. We had a great set-up
for the car and we found a great solution with the Pirelli tires."

In fact, both of the Astons were fitted with the latest evolution
of Pirelli P Zero racing slicks flown in for the occasion. Peter
Tyson, vice president of Communications for Pirelli Tire North America
commented "This is a really tremendous result for us, winning one of the
world's top sports car races in such a confident way. I really want to
thank the Aston Martin team not just for the great race victory but also
for all the development and testing that they have done with us; they
really have contributed enormously to our product evolution."

But it wasn't just in GT1 that Pirelli was able to score success. The
Pirelli partnership with Panoz in GT2 has already brought success at the
previous two classic endurance events of the year with victories at both
the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Clearly Panoz was
hoping to make it a triple with victory at Petit Le Mans. They didn't
quite make it to the top spot in GT2 but they did make the podium,
taking third place with the David Brabham, Scott Maxwell, Sebastien
Bourdais in the #50 Panoz Esperante GTLM after an exciting late race
duel between Bourdais and Bill Auberlen in the factory BMW. The sister
#51 Panoz of Gunnar Jeannette, Tom Milner, and Andy Lally followed in
fourth, having been as high as second earlier in the race.